Press the point into thy heart--
Joy and fear!

All the spines upon the thorn into curling tendrils
start.

XVI
O, dismay!

I, a wingless mortal, sporting
With the tresses of the sun?

I, that dare my hand to lay
On the thunder in its snorting?

Ere begun,
Falls my singed song down the sky, even the old

Icarian way.
XVII

From the fall precipitant
These dim snatches of her chant

Only have remain-ed mine;--
That from spear and thorn alone

May be grown
For the front of saint or singer any divinizing twine.

XVIII
Her song said that no springing

Paradise but evermore
Hangeth on a singing

That has chords of weeping,
And that sings the after-sleeping

To souls which wake too sore.
'But woe the singer, woe!' she said; 'beyond the

dead his singing-lore,
All its art of sweet and sore,

He learns, in Elenore!'
XIX

Where is the land of Luthany,
Where is the tract of Elenore?

I am bound therefor.
XX

'Pierce thy heart to find the key;
With thee take

Only what none else would keep;
Learn to dream when thou dost wake,

Learn to wake when thou dost sleep.
Learn to water joy with tears,

Learn from fears to vanquish fears;
To hope, for thou dar'st not despair,

Exult, for that thou dar'st not grieve;
Plough thou the rock until it bear;

Know, for thou else couldst not believe;
Lose, that the lost thou may'st receive;

Die, for none other way canst live.
When earth and heaven lay down their veil,

And that apocalypse turns thee pale;
When thy seeing blindeth thee

To what thy fellow-mortals see;
When their sight to thee is sightless;

Their living, death; their light, most light-
less;

Search no more--
Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

XXI
Where is the land of Luthany,

And where the region Elenore?
I do faint therefor.

'When to the new eyes of thee
All things by immortal power,

Near or far,
Hiddenly

To each other link-ed are,
That thou canst not stir a flower

Without troubling of a star;
When thy song is shield and mirror

To the fair snake-curl-ed Pain,
Where thou dar'st affront her terror

That on her thou may'st attain
Persean conquest; seek no more,

O seek no more!
Pass the gates of Luthany, tread the region Elenore.'

XXII
So sang she, so wept she,

Through a dream-night's day;
And with her magic singing kept she--

Mystical in music--
That garden of enchanting

In visionary May;
Swayless for my spirit's haunting,

Thrice-threefold walled with emerald from our mor-
tal mornings grey.

XXIII
And as a necromancer

Raises from the rose-ash
The ghost of the rose;

My heart so made answer
To her voice's silver plash,--

Stirred in reddening flash,
And from out its mortal ruins the purpureal phantom

blows.
XXIV

Her tears made dulcet fretting,
Her voice had no word,

More than thunder or the bird.
Yet, unforgetting,

The ravished soul her meanings knew. Mine ears
heard not, and I heard.

XXV
When she shall unwind

All those wiles she wound about me,
Tears shall break from out me,

That I cannot find
Music in the holy poets to my wistful want, I doubt

me!
CONTEMPLATION.

This morning saw I, fled the shower,
The earth reclining in a lull of power:

The heavens, pursuing not their path,
Lay stretched out naked after bath,

Or so it seemed; field, water, tree, were still,
Nor was there any purpose on the calm-browed hill.

The hill, which sometimes visibly is
Wrought with unresting energies,

Looked idly; from the musing wood,
And every rock, a life renewed

Exhaled like an unconscious thought
When poets, dreaming unperplexed,

Dream that they dream of nought.
Nature one hour appears a thing unsexed,

Or to such serene balance brought
That her twin natures cease their sweet alarms,

And sleep in one another's arms.
The sun with resting pulses seems to brood,

And slacken its command upon my unurged blood.
The river has not any care

Its passionless water to the sea to bear;
The leaves have brown content;

The wall to me has freshness like a scent,
And takes half animate the air,

Making one life with its green moss and stain;
And life with all things seems too perfect blent

For anything of life to be aware.
The very shades on hill, and tree, and plain,

Where they have fallen doze, and where they doze remain.
No hill can idler be than I;

No stone its inter-particled vibration
Investeth with a stiller lie;

No heaven with a more urgent rest betrays
The eyes that on it gaze.

We are too near akin that thou shouldst cheat
Me, Nature, with thy fair deceit.

In poets floating like a water-flower
Upon the bosom of the glassy hour,

In skies that no man sees to move,
Lurk untumultuous vortices of power,

For joy too native, and for agitation
Too instant, too entire for sense thereof,

Motion like gnats when autumn suns are low,
Perpetual as the prisoned feet of love

On the heart's floors with pain-ed pace that go.
From stones and poets you may know,

Nothing so active is, as that which least seems so.
For he, that conduit running wine of song,

Then to himself does most belong,
When he his mortal house unbars

To the importunate and thronging feet
That round our corporal walls unheeded beat;

Till, all containing, he exalt
His stature to the stars, or stars

Narrow their heaven to his fleshly vault:
When, like a city under ocean,

To human things he grows a desolation,
And is made a habitation

For the fluctuous universe
To lave with unimpeded motion.

He scarcely frets the atmosphere
With breathing, and his body shares

The immobility of rocks;
His heart's a drop-well of tranquillity;

His mind more still is than the limbs of fear,
And yet its unperturbed velocity

The spirit of the simoom mocks.
He round the solemn centre of his soul

Wheels like a dervish, while his being is
Streamed with the set of the world's harmonies,

In the long draft of whatsoever sphere
He lists the sweet and clear

Clangour of his high orbit on to roll,
So gracious is his heavenly grace;

And the bold stars does hear,
Every one in his airy soar,

For evermore
Shout to each other from the peaks of space,

As thwart ravines of azure shouts the mountaineer.
'BY REASON OF THY LAW'.

Here I make oath--
Although the heart that knows its bitterness

Hear loath,
And credit less--

That he who kens to meet Pain's kisses fierce
Which hiss against his tears,

Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,
Nor all iniquity of the froward years

Shall his inur-ed wing make idly bate,
Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight

To lose observance quite;

• thunder [´θʌndə] n.雷 vi.打雷 vt.吼出 (初中英语单词)
• singer [´siŋə] n.歌手，演唱者 (初中英语单词)
• couldst [kudst] can的第二人称单数 (初中英语单词)
• immortal [i´mɔ:təl] a.不死的n.不朽的人物 (初中英语单词)
• shield [ʃi:ld] n.盾牌；防御 v.保护 (初中英语单词)
• conquest [´kɔŋkwest] n.赢得；获得；占领地 (初中英语单词)
• instant [´instənt] a.立即的 n.紧迫；瞬间 (初中英语单词)
• running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
• solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
• gracious [´greiʃəs] a.和蔼可亲的；任慈的 (初中英语单词)
• mortal [´mɔ:tl] a.致命的 n.凡人 (高中英语单词)
• seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
• unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
• serene [si´ri:n] n.&a.清澈的；宁静的 (高中英语单词)
• heavenly [´hevənli] a.天的，天空的 (高中英语单词)
• quarry [´kwɔri] n.(采)石场；猎物 (高中英语单词)
• vanquish [´væŋkwiʃ] vt.征服，克服；击败 (英语四级单词)
• emerald [´emərəld] n.纯绿宝石；翠绿色 (英语四级单词)
• wistful [´wistfəl] a.渴望的；不满足的 (英语四级单词)
• slacken [´slækən] v.(使)松弛，(使)缓慢 (英语四级单词)
• freshness [´freʃnis] n.新鲜 (英语四级单词)
• urgent [´ə:dʒənt] a.急迫的，紧急的 (英语四级单词)
• corporal [´kɔ:pərəl] a.肉体的，身体的 (英语四级单词)
• stature [´stætʃə] n.身高；身材 (英语四级单词)
• whatsoever [,wɔtsəu´evə] (强势语)=whatever (英语四级单词)
• thwart [θwɔ:t] vt.阻挠 a.横(断的) (英语四级单词)
• observance [əb´zə:vəns] n.遵守；惯例；仪式 (英语四级单词)
• affront [ə´frʌnt] vt.&n.(当众)侮辱 (英语六级单词)
• animate [´ænimit, ´ænimeit] vt.使有生气；激励 (英语六级单词)
• glassy [´glɑ:si] a.光滑的；无神的 (英语六级单词)
• iniquity [i´nikwiti] n.不公正；邪恶 (英语六级单词)